Home School Life Journal

Home School Life Journal

"Let us strive to make each moment beautiful."

Saint Francis DeSales

painting by Katie Bergenholtz

April 1-7, 2016, Our Weekly Homeschool Report, days 105-109

We enjoyed a game night with friends, dinner out with a friend and went to our co-op. We went to doctors and dentist appointments. We worked on arrangements for our graduation ceremony and for our dinner theater production.

We checked our understanding of Newton's First Law of Motion and then went on to look at Newton's Second Law of Motion. (post coming)

We experimented with building a cork shooter.

We rehearsed our play.

The Reluctant Writer's Research Paper

James started a paper on wasps. Since he is a reluctant writer, we are taking this slowly, breaking down the process into small increments. On the first day, I just assigned him the task of picking a topic that he really would enjoy researching and writing about that could be divided into four parts. I gave him examples using the topics we have been studing -four of the most famous crusades or Newton's Laws (Three laws of motion and his Universal Law of Gravity). He chose four kinds of wasps. He is particularly interested in the different ways they build their homes, although the specifics of the topic might change once he does some research. On the second day, we ordered books from the library's interlibrary loan system since our library did not have any books on this topic on their shelves. Yes, it is a tiny library. He cannow take a break from this project until the books come in. Meanwhile, we will work on a unit on Chaucer as well as continued work on Midsummer Night's Dream.

He, like his mother, has always loved insects. He asked me the other day how wasps build their nests which led to a discussion of the different types of wasps. It seemed like a good opportunity to explore that question.

If it'd help James for his paper, we have two different wasps' nests on our nature table (taken out of our bike shed) right now that I could photograph up close and email to you. We're planning to dissect them later but he might enjoy identifying which wasps made it. I could send a cross-section pic of each next week after we've sketched the outside, too. Let me know :)

Richard the Lionheart is one of my favourite parts of history to look at. So many contradictory pieces of information written about him!

This is great, Phyllis! Because space is limited in my own home (no basement), all these amazing projects, do you save them? If so, for how long? I find it difficult to decide which things to part with due to space constraints.